BLM Meetings on Oil Shale and Tar Sands Development Surface the Water Issue

The Bureau of Land Management, part of the US Department of the Interior, has begun public meetings to obtain comments for the programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) required to support commercial oil shale and tar sands leasing on federal lands in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.

According to a report in the Salt Lake Tribune, a former Utah state science adviser estimated that 10,000 acre-feet of water would be needed to sustain a year of producing 100,000 barrels per day of kerogen. (One acre-foot is a volume one foot deep covering an area of one acre. An acre-foot contains exactly 43,560 cubic feet, or about 325,851.4 gallons US. One thousand acre-feet (kaf) contains 325,851,400 gallons. The 10 kaf needed for 100 kbpd of kerogen per year would thus require 3.25 billion gallons of water per year.)

greencarcongress